Surface maintenance vehicles and cleaning devices have a long history subject to gradual innovation and improvement toward improved and oftentimes automated performance in removing debris and contamination from floors. These vehicles and devices may be self-powered, towed, or pushed, and/or manually powered and may carry a human operator during cleaning operations. Such vehicles and devices include scrubbers, extractors, sweepers and vacuums, as well as combinations thereof, intended for cleaning, scrubbing, wiping and/or drying a portion of a substantially flat surface both indoors and outdoors. Many such vehicles and devices employ a side brush assembly for accessing a larger floor envelope. Such side brush assemblies make it easier to clean near walls or other obstacles without damaging the machine or the wall while at the same time widening the cleaning path of the machine to increase productivity measured as area cleaned divided by time.
The side brush assembly of such prior art cleaning vehicles often mounts at or near the side of a surface maintenance vehicle and swings outwardly away from a machine center and downwardly toward the surface to be cleaned. A lift motion of the side brush assembly is desired to raise the brush deck to provide ground clearance when the scrubbing functions are turned off. An extension/retraction motion is desired to extend the deck past the machine envelope when operating, and to retract the deck back when not operating the side brush. Portions of the side brush assembly retracted behind the machine frame are protected from damage.
Some prior art side brush assemblies have included a large number of parts, which can increase the cost and complexity of such assemblies. In addition, some prior art side brush assemblies have a large footprint on the surface maintenance vehicle that can complicate packaging the side brush assembly within the confines of the vehicle. In addition, the packaging considerations of a relatively large side brush assembly make it difficult to use the same side brush assembly design on different vehicles of different sizes.